Toddler dies in hot car after being accidentally left for hours

A toddler died Tuesday after being left for hours in a vehicle on Hardie Drive in Moraga.

A toddler died Tuesday after being left for hours in a vehicle on Hardie Drive in Moraga.

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

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A toddler died Tuesday after being left for hours in a vehicle on Hardie Drive in Moraga.

A toddler died Tuesday after being left for hours in a vehicle on Hardie Drive in Moraga.

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

Toddler dies in hot car after being accidentally left for hours

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A toddler died Tuesday after being left for hours in a car in Moraga while outside temperatures hit at least 80 degrees, police said.

Lily Aracic, who was 19 months old, had been accidentally left in the vehicle by a family member, according to Moraga police. The same family member found her there, in a vehicle parked on Hardie Drive, hours later. She wasn’t breathing.

The relative called 911 at about 3:50 p.m. Police tried to revive the child with rescue breathing at the scene, but she was pronounced dead after being taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.

The incident is under investigation. Police have not said which family member left Lily in the car, or what circumstances may have led to her being forgotten there. The Contra Costa County coroner’s office reported that Lily lived in Oakland.

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It’s a shocking statistic and a horrifying thought: An average of 37 children die every year after being left in a hot car. Usually, it's because their parents say they forgot they were even in the car.

Media: Fox 13 Tampa

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Officers said the temperature outside when they reached the girl was about 80 degrees. Experts in child deaths from heatstroke in cars say that the temperature inside the vehicle could have reached 130 degrees.

“If the car seat was in direct sunlight, it may be even hotter,” said Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Jose State University who has studied heat-related car deaths in children and runs a national database on such incidents.

Nationwide, 789 children have died from heatstroke in a vehicle since 1998, according to Null. This year is on track to be one of the worst since such deaths started to be recorded, he said. So far, 46 children have died in the U.S. after being left in hot cars this year. Three were in California: Along with Lily, a 2-year-old boy died in Sacramento in July and an 18-month-old boy died in Willits in June.

In most cases, the outside temperature is already dangerously warm — 90 degrees or higher, Null said. But in at least three cases nationwide this year, the temperature was in the 70s. And he knows of cases where children died when the outside temperature was even lower.

“It does not have to be a really hot day,” Null said. “There was a case in El Cerrito, back around 2009, on a 67-degree day at the BART station. The parent was supposed to drop the child off and forgot.”

Keep your kids safe

KidsAndCars.org has tips to keep children being left in a car:

Make it part of your routine to open the back door of the car every time you park.

Place something in the backseat — like a cell phone, wallet or work ID — that you need so you’ll be forced to look there.

Keep a stuffed animal in the car seat. When the baby is in the car seat, move the toy to the front seat of the car as a reminder that the baby is in the back.

Ask your child care provider to call immediately if your child is not dropped off on time.

Nearly 90 percent of children who die from heatstroke in a car are age 3 or younger, according to the group KidsAndCars.org, which seeks to end deaths of children accidentally left in cars. Just over half of the children are 12 months or younger.

Thirty-seven kids die in hot cars on average each year, and in about 55 percent of those cases, the children were left there by parents who forgot their child was in the vehicle.

“The biggest mistake people make is to think this can’t happen to them or someone in their family,” said Janette Fennell, founder of KidsAndCars.org. “It’s not like anybody does this on purpose.”

Fennell’s group is working to pass legislation that would require cars to have an automated system that alerts drivers if a baby is left in a car seat. The group also offers suggestions to parents to help remind themselves they have a child in the car.

It’s both impossible to imagine and horrifyingly easy to understand how a child could be left behind, Fennell said. Babies are in rear-facing car seats, not in a parent’s direct line of sight. Infants don’t talk; toddlers may be sleeping. Parents are exhausted, they are distracted. They slip out of a normal routine and forget to drop a baby at day care or a grandparent’s house. Hours pass.

“The death of a child is the worst thing that can ever happen in someone’s life,” Fennell said. “Now, take the worst thing in the world, and let’s add the fact that you’re the parent or family member who did this.”

When the family member called 911 for Lily, the dispatcher who answered the call reported there was a person “screaming and crying” in the background, according to Moraga police.

On Wednesday, a man who answered the phone at Lily’s grandparents’ house in Piedmont said only this: “It’s the worst thing that could possibly happen.”